As always, I have provided a
release package on my my googlecode project.
It includes the movie file, submission text, screenshots, a spreadsheet of frame counts, and Ram Addresses.
You know Mario can't let his sidekick take all the glory!
IMPORTANT: This uses DeSmuME 9.6 with Advanced Bus-level Timing OFF (Config -> Emulation Settings). It will not sync without this setting off.
Improvements
This is my long overdue completion of v2 that I started soon after my
1st publication. I took a lot of time off due to luck manipulation issues World 5. During that time, TRT finished his movie. Most of the content up to 5-G was done prior to his movie (but map sections edited to sync with 9.6 instead of 9.2).
Because TRT's movie is the currently published, I will compare my improvements to his movie.
This movie is 11918 frames (3 minutes 18.6 seconds) shorter than TRT's
published movie. Most of this, however, is due to Desmume9.6 having significantly less lag than 9.4. It is hard to estimate the true improvement due to some improvements in the map movements I made. However, the in-level improvements total 723 frames (12.05 seconds). I had overall better luck on map movements too, but I have no idea how to calculate a lag-reduced value. I don't value map manipulation improvements much anyway since the entertainment value of this game is with the levels.
Some tricks not used in previous published movies:
- Sliding at the bottom of a hill
- By running down a hill and sliding just before the bottom, you can get a speed boost. If you hold down you can continue to get extra speed for many frames after the hill. This is used in 1-1 and several levels in world 8
- Fast vertical swimming
- By alternating B and X for swimming, you can retain 31 vertical speed as opposed to turbo firing one of them which results in an alternating speed of 31 & 30. It also goes so fast that the swimming sound is canceled out (which is kind of pleasant compared to the sound of turbo fire swimming).
Most improvements come from various strategy improvements, more corner boosts, and various optimizations.
Also, not so relevant overall, I must mention, the luck manipulation for getting the 2nd blue shell for 8-3 is ABSOLUTELY EVIL. I spent about as many hours getting good luck there as making the rest of the TAS. You have so many elements working against you for luck manipulation: The previous level is a boss level so no flag, you are mini-mario so no killing enemies to change the RNG, the previous level is the most brutal in the whole game to optimize, and the hammer bros appears immediately in 8-3 so nothing in 8-3 can affect what he drops. I think TRT mentioned struggling in this spot too. Evil :|
Summary
- Emulator: DeSmuME 9.6 (with Advanced Bus-Level timing off)
- Takes damage to save time
- Genre: Platform
Thanks
- TRT for his published movie and many tricks/strats he discovered along the way
- Was0x who kept beating me on the early levels forcing me to redo :)
- sgrunt for taking the time to do the encoding & streaming
Suggested Screenshot
Baxter: Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.
